In many cases, this was deadly. The researchers estimated that warming due to deforestation accounted for 28,330 annual deaths over that 20-year period. More than half were in south-east Asia, owing to the larger populations in areas with heat vulnerability. About a third were in tropical Africa, and the remainder in Central and South America. The study was published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers in Brazil, Ghana and the UK compared non-accident mortality rates and temperatures in areas affected by tropical land clearance.
Previous studies have shown how cutting and burning trees causes long-term localised warming, but the new paper is the first to calculate the ensuing death toll. Prof Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds said the message was that “deforestation kills”. He expected many people would be shocked by the findings because the local dangers of deforestation were often lost in the global climate debate and the market-focused expansion of agricultural frontiers. As an example, he pointed to the Brazilian region of Mato Grosso, where there has been massive deforestation to open up land for vast soya bean plantations. Farmers from this area are now pushing for an end to the soy moratorium in the Amazon so they can clear more territory......read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/27/deforestation-has-killed-half-a-million-people-in-past-20-years-study-finds
AND THERE'S MORE......Colombian Amazon deforestation surges as armed groups tighten grip. Country had previously turned the tide on deforestation but armed rebels have revoked the ban. Guardian Luke Taylor in Bogota Thu 11 Apr 2024 Deforestation in the Colombian Amazon is surging and could be at a historic peak as armed groups use the rainforest as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations with the government. Preliminary data shows that deforestation in the region was 40% higher in the first three months of this year than in 2023 as armed groups tightened their control over the rainforest, said Susana Muhamad, the country’s environment minister. “We are seeing an upward trend that is quite worrying and this has two main reasons,” Muhamad told a press conference in Bogotá. “The first is the very significant coercion [of local people] by armed Colombia has been turning the tide on runaway deforestation in recent years after a 2016 peace accord with the country’s largest guerrilla group left forests unprotected. Without the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) policing the jungle, a record 219,973 hectares (544,000 acres) were lost in 2017.
Gustavo Petro’s government – the first leftwing administration in the country’s history – has rapidly reversed the trend by negotiating with the armed rebels who have filled the Farc’s power vacuum.d groups in the area, and the second is obviously the favourable conditions [for fires] that have to do with the El Niño phenomenon. Deforestation across Colombia plummeted 29% from 2021 to 2022 to reach the lowest level since 2013, and preliminary data suggests it dropped another 25%-35% in 2023, the environment ministry said.
That trend has come to an end, however. The unprecedented drop in deforestation was largely due to the order of the Estado Mayor Central (EMC), a group of dissident rebels who dominate vast swathes of Colombia’s forests in the south of the country. The EMC banned forest clearing in 2022 to get a seat at the negotiating table with Petro’s government. But as those talks became strained last year, the armed rebels revoked the ban. Rather than protecting the Amazon the EMC is now allowing land grabbers to lay waste to the forests in order to show the government who controls the region and extract more favourable negotiating terms......will it ever end!?......read on https://www.theguardian.com/